Hi. Does anyone have any experience of recording a kick drum without the resonator head? I'll be in the studio and i'm wanting to sweet spot the mic and thought it would be a lot easier without the resonator head on.

Cheers for the heads up guys. I've managed to get a good sound from the mic when placed inside the kick drum but I do agree, sounds quite like a cardboard box from the outside. The overheads are going to pick that up. Thanks once again

I've recorded with a single-headed kick before and gotten great results. it was a 24", with an emperor on the batter, and absolutely no muffling at all. sounded huge. had this FAT sub-bass "whomp" to go along with the attack.

normally I use a resonant head with a small port to the side of center, but at that point I had just gotten the 24" and figured I'd give it a whirl without the front head, as it didn't come with a hoop or tensioning rods for the front head.

further proof that things don't always work out the way you think they will in the studio, even if you've done dozens of projects and have a good handle on getting a good recorded drum sound.

also due to the complete lack of muffling. I like a little "boom" to my kick, and was really surprised at how much sustain the one head provided in that application. normally, I would NEVER use a 1-headed kick, so it caught me off guard.

A 24" kick, of normal depth, is really hard to control without any muffling because of the amount of sustain both heads produce. So I'm not surprised that you got a decent tone with only one head and no muffling. You'd be very hard pressed to get the same response from a 22" kick.

"If the goal is for me to give up my reality for your reality, then the goal is for me to give up my self for your self--a goal I have to reject."

yeah, I have been using a superkick II (? I know it's a superkick of some sort) on the batter and the aquarian resonant head that has the circular adhesive strip about a third of the way in from the edge on the 24. It's a little deader than what I'm used to with that drum (emperor on the batter) but it records REALLY well. the only other time I've muffled that drum was when I was playing a lot of death metal/grindcore, and I needed a shorter note to articulate all the double kick patterns.

i recently went into the studio and the guy told me to take off the reso head of my bass.he put a mic inside and put a blanket where the reso head was supposed to be.after all the mixing and mastering, my kick drum sounded pretty badass!sounded exactly how i wanted it to sound

The ol' blanket trick. I've done that before, works well. I've done it with the reso head on though.

What the engineer did, in my case, was stuck a mic in the kick, made a "blanket tunnel", extending out from the kick, propped up by a mic stand and stuck another mic at the end of the "tunnel". Totally enclosed. The second mic was on a boom, angled down with the mic facing towards my kick and the end of the blanket draped over the end of the boom, thus sealing off the end. I got great results.